


tell me we'll never get used to it

by foolshope



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 The Great Escape, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, cringe purple prose is cringe but i simply do not have the stamina for coherence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27600908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolshope/pseuds/foolshope
Summary: even after everything that’s happened in the last year, archie likes to think he still knows jughead like the back of his hand.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	tell me we'll never get used to it

**Author's Note:**

> if i've already written an episode tag to this it's bc no i didn't <3 anyways atrocious writing is bad bla bla bla i hate it here but i'm posting it anyway because i have no standards except that's a lie it's because i care more about validating myself than i do waiting to finish writing things that i won't actually finish. i have..... no attention span. but it's about the art metaphors....... the pencil to paper...... the paintbrush to canvas...... physical touch babey! no that's it that's the drabble :/ 
> 
> it's 12am on a work night okay i have nothing to offer but scraps pls enjoy
> 
> p.s. if it's not clear enough, this starts as archie falls into the bunker after the prison break because yeah i'm still thinking about it in 2020

_"i did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. i did not like to be touched because i craved it too much. i wanted to be held very tight so i would not break."_   
_wasted by marya hornbacher  
_

* * *

even after everything that’s happened in the last year, archie likes to think he still knows jughead like the back of his hand. 

some things never change even if they, us, _you and me,_ do -- like how jughead still cuts the tags off his clothes because they itch in all the worst places, how he parts his hair to the right because he thinks of things like which side of his face looks better in the mirror (archie thinks it doesn’t matter; his hair is short enough to count all the moles on his face anyway), how he’ll deny that he snores because his dad does and that he sleeps like he’s never slept at all yet always light enough to wake from his nightmares instead of finishing them to the end. how he forgets to brush his teeth in the morning so he does it before bed. how every shoe is a slip-on for him because he never unties the shoelaces. how he thinks egg yolks are gross because they’re runny like snot, how he always kicks archie’s foot underneath the table when he reminds him they ate their own snot in preschool. how he still boos at the tv when the guy gets the girl and it’s not in a movie he’s seen over ten times, how he sleeps with his socks off and the fan on, how he likes his coffee black because his dad does and his bacon crispy because his mom does, how every tick and habit is an echo of a story told before his own and he’ll always be trying to write them down because skin is a canvas, just like everything else.

he wonders what jughead reads in his. he wonders if he could even make out the words -- can’t remember the last time someone tried, or maybe it’s just too fresh, too recent to remember, fingertips to stomach wrapped around steel, striking out like a snake and pulling back just as fast. too fast to leave an imprint, you’d think, yet one sinks deep all the same; reaches in and digs even further with a fevered insistence, a frenzied curiosity, reaching and rummaging in search of something -- he doesn’t know what. he never does, but it feels familiar.

same song, different verse.

he likes to think he still knows the words, but they escape him. leave in a flurry of motion, a tipping and a falling, a landing against concrete hard enough to break bones but he must be at his limit, because all he feels is a dull rattle through them and the utter lack of anything else.

when he looks up, there’s only shadows, smears, as if water’s been spilt over everything and maybe it has, a swell of saltwater high enough to swallow but not drown. 

there’s a moment of deja vu. a front flip into liquid gray, spitting out mouthfuls to make way for red, laughs between lips over his and bodies still ticked and scratched as they walk away but less than they will be -- another of white mixed with the gray, the red, of knuckles making their mark and being marked in return, equal and opposite reaction. he wonders if this is what cheryl felt like being pulled from sweetwater: head over heels and still falling.

he likes to think it’s jughead that catches him, but his own hands aren’t working and these ones feel entirely unfamiliar. 

he’s felt jughead’s hands before, knows their weight across his shoulders from all the times he fell off the jungle gym, the scratch of nails bitten bloody that archie grabs when he catches him doing it, the feel of fingertips tangling with his to help jug up from where he’d been tripped by one too many shoes over linoleum. he knows the feel of each knuckle rearranged over guitar strings, guided home unresisting and sometimes resisting, retreating, running rather than failing because he knows exactly what kind of bitter disappointment tastes like (archie thinks it doesn’t matter; each time he gets it wrong is another reason for their hands to brush) -- he knows jughead’s hands and these ones are lighter, static electricity caught between sheets, barely there yet solid enough to keep him from falling any further.

there’s nothing familiar about _this._ being caught versus catching, hands searching his for answers instead of his clinging for fear they’ll let go, slip under and away from him, caught in the current of reds and grays to be closed beneath casket and dirt and granite, or even just gravel stuck to palms and the tedious process of pulling it out piece by piece. this is _different,_ and he can’t tell if he’s the palms or the tweezers. on one hand, he’s road rash, raw and burning blisters wide open, salt to open wound, but on the other, he’s pinching closed around a rock in his sole, an intrusion, and pulling away promises relief but he can’t quite find the foothold. 

there’s nothing familiar about the touch, the sight, the smell, but then he hears the sound of his own name said in a voice he’d know anywhere, and he thinks maybe the only thing that’s different is all the blood on their hands.

“archie,” he says, and it _is_ jughead, but the syllables sound off, _other,_ and he can’t tell if it’s jughead or the rush in his ears, but the hands gripping at his are starting to feel like something he’s felt before; the print of his own pressed back to him, note for note, an equal and opposite -- jughead, trying to see through all the blood instead of being the one covered in it.

if skin is a canvas, their color has always been red.

right now it’s gray. coat, concrete, ever present beanie keeping the hair out of those eyes, a silver swimming closer with liferaft relief that archie reaches for despite the miles of space between them, or maybe it’s mere inches. he tries to speak, to open his lips and let out one of the shades growing deeper by the second, but nothing comes out -- nothing at all, and those familiar hands are unfamiliarly gentle.

that’s what it is, isn’t it? because jughead’s always been callous and skinned knees, sharp teeth and dull fingernails, a reckless boy with reckless hands made for keyboards and slipping out of reach, not _this_ \-- cautious, yes, even careful, but not gentle. 

he wonders if gentle is a learned trait.

he tries again -- tries to say _‘it’s okay’,_ tries to say _something,_ even if he’s not sure what. something he’s said before, or maybe something jughead has; the writer, the author, when he was the one covered in blood and archie was trying to see through it. something _familiar,_ but archie’s never been very good with words.

except jughead says _‘i’ve got you’_ like he’s reading a script, like he has it memorized, and archie feels himself unravel from some rung over their heads, one of the footholds he missed on the way down just to land here, even if it meant bruises on top of bruises, scrapes over scrapes -- a pooling mess of all their favorite colors, painted on by him and those before him. it’s all ink in the end, spilled and staining clothes straight through to skin. invisible, eventually, rhyme and reason only coaxed back out with a combination of heat and light.

somehow, jughead’s always been able to make out the words.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you have to post 1k words that say a whole lot of nothing because mental illness <3


End file.
